S3E1
Ever since the creation of the New Splixsons, they have been experiencing night terrors and insomnia. Going to die. Going to kill. Who are you? I am Fred Blake.Who are you? I am the Fred Blake! Dreamwalker was tumbing through Linus' dreams, when he realized, that something was wrong. It was cold. Freezing. The darkness was so thick and oppressive, Dreamwalker was wondering whether the walls and roof were actually fashioned from it, from patches of night sky resentful that no stars had ever shone in their confines. He had been standing, rooted to the spot, for what seemed like an eternity. His senses were dulled with both pain and the tedium of his incarceration. In this place, the moments, the minutes, the hours seemed so stretched out that the words lost all meaning. He felt his face with numbed fingers, reminded himself of what he was, who he was. And Linus, and the other New Splixsons, taken from him and held somewhere out there in the blackness. He could picture them, growing older as his struggles continued, their wiry bodies wizening, their clear young skin wrinkling in this dark and empty place. We know you now, Fred,''The voice was a mocking whisper. But the loudest whisper he had ever heard, up close in his ears. ''We are going to use you, to take from you what we need. We have been waiting so long, so patiently, for someone like you. ''The sinister voice a low moan of pleasure. ''And then we are going to kill you, Fred. We are going to kill you so slowly, so tenderly, you won't even realise that the moment of your death has come. We will be cloaked in your memory through the eons ahead. For the freezing chill that bred this darkness will make you a monument to us. We'll keep your memory fresh and dead and ours. No one else's. Ours. Forever. Dreamwalker said nothing. Blue eyes closed and his thin mouth clamped shut. But he knew the whispering spectre was telling the truth, and he could tell for certain that whatever was speaking to him was utterly mad. Another voice came to him, echoing eerily the void. Willie's voice. Willie: Fred, Fred, are you alright? At that moment, Dreamwalker was ejected from inside Linus' head and back into reality. Linus layed across his bed, still asleep. Dreamwalker reverted. Fred: It's like being entombed, shut in with only the darkness. It's so black in here. Willie, it's like nothing else has ever existed. Everyone I've ever known, everywhere I've ever been. It's like all that was just some kind of dream. It's only when I use clichés like that that I realise there has to have been something else. We're going to rip right through you, Fred. You're going to die. We're going back. We're going to kill you. Kill you. Kill you. Fred felt the whispering demons pulling at his memories, twisting them, devouring them, attempting to erase them. He stayed calm, eyes shut, retreating into himself. It was like trying to keep control of a huge house full of wild children tearing from room to room. What a pity, he reflected, that his mind contained so many places to hide. Suddenly Fred could hear cries of anguish over the mad jabbering of the whispering voices. They were coming from the New Splixsons. Fred: No, please, let them go. Stop hurting them. We're going to kill you. Kill you. Kill you. Even as Fred was distracted by the Splixsons' distress, he realised that the voices in his mind were taking the scraps of thought and memory he was sacrificing to the battle for control, and building a new image. Pale, white, a bloom of some kind. Flowers, tranquil against a deep indigo sky that was glittering with stars. He recognised the flowers. Recognised them from an age long distant, when as a young boy on Hathor he had watched funerals being conducted with pomp and magnificent ceremony. The flowers, almost invisible at first, so far were they from the eye, dropped fluttering onto the crowd of mourners far below. As a child it had been easy to believe that the flowers had fallen from heaven itself. They were the Hathor flowers of remembrance. Fred was immersed in a clear blue pillar of light. Past the blue veil, his surroundings blurred steadily. As the blue light faded, his surroundings became clear again. A huge palace radiating a dark light a fair distance away up ahead. Deck materializes right next to Fred. Fred: Oh. Oh, what? Where are we? Deck: Disorientated? Not surprising. We are in countless different times all at once, over a span of thousands of years. Simultaneous arrival in hundreds of different time zones. The League of Paradoxes has requested that I summon you. Fred: No need to get sniffy. So what does the League want? Deck: I'll let you listen to what they have to say. Deck snaps his fingers, teleporting both him and Fred to the League of Paradoxes. Timascus: Fred Blake. Our Agency has encountered a particular time distortion ever since your creation of the New Splixsons. I suggest you pay closer attention to what's going on right beneath your nose. We at the Agency have observed that very form of slippage many times over the last few quarters. In many ways it behaves quite unlike any other form of causal disturbance ever before detected. But one possible explanation has presented itself in one of the more esoteric branches of academia. Paradox: The distortion fits a thesis which has been among the thinking circles for a long time. One which has never been accepted into our Codex of Disciplines. Anti-time. Fred: I'm not following you. Paradox: We exist in the universe of positive time, finite time. The League of Paradoxes anchored the continuity of the universe. But just as matter has its counterpart in anti-matter, just as every action has an equal and opposite reaction, then, by all the immutable laws of the universe, positive time, the Web of Time, must have its shadow. Timascus: Anti-time, as intractable and destructive a force to causality as anti-matter is to space. Something with no past, no present, no future. A perpetuity of meaningless chaos. A now, with no beginning or end. Elegant. Brilliant. Thoroughly logical. And utter gibberish. Fred: And how does any of this concern me? Deck: The Web of Time is stretched to breaking. History is leaking like a sieve. Paradox: If we plot these slippages back, however, a remarkable pattern emerges. We see the earliest major wave of distortion centred around the planet Hathor after your battle with Mick. Fred: You talk like it's a virus. Paradox: Precisely. Fred: And you think the New Splixsons are the carriers. Timascus: If the universe of anti-time was real, Fred, if it were an actual place, how do you suppose it might be accessed? Fred: I don't know. Some kind of gateway, a rip, a tear, a breach, a hole? Timascus: Go on. Fred: The Splixsons? Paradox: In itself, the their rebirth is not the problem. They are nothing. They would amount to nothing. Their descendants would be nobodies. They're nothing special, Fred. They wouldn't go on to cure a disease or start a war or discover a planet. By rights, their creation would be but the tiniest hiccup, easily made and easily mended. But their living was a rift. Their very being a breach. They are a rip in the fabric of space time, a breach with presence and physicality. Timascus: And it's through them we believe these distortions are flowing. A living conduit to a dimension which should never have met ours. Fred: Harm one hair on their heads in malice, Timascus, and I'll hound you to the end of reality. Timascus: I give you my promise. I will not sanction any random justice or injustice against them.